Question about FH7 and "Lumper" vs. "Splitter"


Gary <gary.gauthier@...>
 

I'm coming from RM9 and was watching, "All about sources in Family Historian" on YouTube.
It raised a significant question about how I create/store my references.

In RM9, there isn't a rigid concept of a Source part and a Citation part.
It has a Master part, which tends to be invariant for many variable Detail parts.
RM9 refers to a given Master + a specific Detail is referred to as being a Citation.
Most importantly, RM9 allows the same instance of this Citation to be shared between many facts.
But because the one instance of Master + Detail is shared, changes in either part are reflected in all uses.

It seems as if Family Historian does not have this same concept of sharing.
So; the decision to do Lumping or Splitting becomes FAR more crucial.
The more one puts in the Source portion, that is the more extreme the splitting, the more can be changed across all references at once.
In the extreme case, all data is contained in the Source portion and any change is propagated to all references.
This sounds lovely if one has to accommodate changes within a given extraction that is referenced by several facts.
However; if one has many references to a document on a website and the website URL changes, there could be hundreds of changes required.
It sounds like there is no clear "winning" strategy.

I have my imported RM9 references grouped by departmental archive website; often with 150 specific references.
This looks like it could be an issue in using FH7.
How have FH7 users dealt with this issue?

Gary